Mac Forums Sunday Chat

Join me at 7:00 p.m. Central time Sunday, September 11, 2016 (12:00 a.m. Monday GMT) for the Mac-Forums Video Chat. We have the forum roundup, Apple news, a Mac tip or two, and an IOS 10 tip or two.

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Show notes

Don’t forget to empty the trash if you want to free up drive space. Otherwise items in the trash continue to take up space.

Items on external drives are only actually removed if the drive is attached when you empty the trash. For some programs you have to empty trash from within the application then empty trash from the Finder as well.

When changing passwords for services like iCloud or Gmail make sure to make the appropriate changes within your email program’s preferences as well.

If you are planning to change carriers and take your existing phone or IOS device with you to a new carrier, contact the carrier first to see if it is possible and what restrictions might be in place. I recommend doing this before entering the store to avoid being hit with high pressure sales pitches or feeling rushed.

IOS 10 has changed behavior of the Home button a bit. Previously with fingerprint ID enabled all you had to do was touch the Home button whereas now you must press the button. You can get the old behavior back using the accessibility features in IOS 10.

iPhone 7 changes

Both iPhone 7 models ship in 32, 64, and 128 GB configurations. As predicted the 16 GB configuration is no more. Screen sizes are 4.7” and 5.5’ The 7+ supports 1920 x 1080 resolution.

Increased splash and water resistance.

Camera is now at 12 MP with the 7+ supporting both telephoto and wide angle use. Digital zoom on 7+ is 10X

Video can be recorded in 4K mode at 30 fps. Take 8 MP still photos while recording 4K video.

• Use your voice to send messages, set reminders, and more
• Get proactive suggestions
• Use hands-free
• Listen and identify songs

Audiotronics summary of keynote event

The Home button is no longer a physical button but instead ffeels as though you’re pushing a button. Apple says it should be more responsive and more reliable.

The quad core A10 processor has two cores dedicatedto higher performance and tw0o dedicated to better battery life.

The Apple Watch Series 2 is now water resistant to a depth of 50 meters. The Series 2 includes a much requested GPS chip. There have also been improvements to the software. Apple claims new models are 50% Faster due to a GPU, other chip changes, and software improvements in Watch OS 3.

AirPods pair with recent IOS devices running IOS 10, Watch OS 3, or Macs running MacOS Sierra. 5 hours use per charge. The special charging case can go 24 hours before it needs recharging via a lightning connector. Late October

Not everyone is thrilled with the removal of the headphone jack. Especially bothersome i.e. the fact that you cannot charge the phone and use the headset simultaneously. There will be some third-party solutions but so far there have been mixed reviews

Google is moving away from the Hangouts on Air format directly in favor over of working in conjunction with YouTube Live. I'm still working out the changes needed for me to broadcast. I've got a few things to figure out. Rather than cancel the show I'll do a video and upload it afterwards. We'll loose the "live" nature of things for this week except for adding comments after the fact. I should have things figured out by next week.

I'll post the link after the upload.

Well done mate, just when you think you've go it worked out they move the goal posts. Look forward to seeing the You Tube link though since my time zone makes it hard to take part "live".
Cheers,
Rod
PS There may be others like me.

The change should offer a lot of options for those who have time to learn / master it but I haven't had time to install an encoder on my machine yet and I have some work-related things I need to do as well. This change has been coming for a few weeks but I forgot that it was this weekend until someone asked about the show in another thread.

The older shows will still be available on YouTube.

Join me tonight for the weekly Mac-Forums Video Chat (9/25/16). It starts at 7:00 p.m. US Central Time as usual (Midnight GMT). We'll have the usual forum roundup, Mac tips, IOS tips, and whatever other Apple/Mac news that comes to mind.

Update: I just tried to play the feed of the show and YouTube informs me that an error occurred. I do not have time to troubleshoot the issue tonight. If it does not correct itself I will reshoot the show at 7:00 p.m. tomorrow night (Midnight GMT).

It appears that the volume was very low. I couldn't hear it at all. Then I saw the error. Reloading took me back to the "begins in a few moments" or something along those lines.

All I was getting when I tested it was the error message and nothing else. I did a test broadcast earlier today and things were pretty good. I made a setting change on the video because I was having issues with my second screen, which is the one I usually show, so maybe that is the issue. I'll have to run it down tomorrow.

Thanks for letting me know.

Just thought I'd check tonight, volume still so low as to be inaudible.

I thought so. I had planned to upload a new version of the show last night but things got a bit hectic around here and are likely to be for the next day or two. I need to do a bit of troubleshooting to determine the cause. I do know that I am picking up a whine in the mixer that wasn't there previously but I think that is unrelated.

I'm putting off tonight's chat. The audio gremlins are back with the almost inaudible audio mentioned in the last chat. I've only had time to do a limited amount of testing today so the issue is still there. I'll work on this later tonight and try to get the show out tomorrow. I'll post an announcement with an update in the thread

After a bit of a hiatus due to technical issues the Mac-Forums weekly Video Chat should be ready to go this week. Joint us for the fun at 7:00 p.m. Central time (Midnight GMT) for the forum roundup, Mac tips and IOS tips as usual. I'm still working through the backlog of info from the last two weeks to see what I'll include so join me for the fun.

The show is processing now so I hope it worked this time. Here are the notes from this weeks show"

Welcome to our newest member Liam94Y01

Member Rod Sprague noted an increased CPU load after updating to Sierra found something called "photoanalysisd" using 140% of my CPU. I was curious of course so I did a bit of Googling and found I was not alone in being concerned. The answer was however simple. It's Photos running a form of facial recognition for the People view.

Long time Mac users have come to trust David Pogue for clear concise Mac tips. Here are some of his tips for using Siri on the Mac.

Pocket-lint’s site has a serious of tips/tricks for those running IOS 10 These tips include the following:

How to remove stock apps: You can now remove the Apple stock apps like Stocks, Compass and others. To do so simply tap and hold on the app icon until it starts wiggling and then tap the "x" You will be asked to confirm your decision. To get them back, simply search for the app in question in the App Store.

How to share an article or YouTube video: Messages now gives you a more graphically friendly sharing option that means pasting a link into a message will expand it to the receiver can see what they are getting. If it's a YouTube video you'll be able to watch it right there in Messages.

Kirk the iTunes Guy usually saves his “Hey Apple Fix This for things our favorite Cupertino-based fruit company needs to address. He didn’t include the following pet peeve in that segment but probably should have. Beginning with macOS Sierra apple has App Store preferences set to automatically download OS updates.

Jim Dalrymple at The Loop points out that this is an automatic download not an automatic installation This process downloads the update in the background, and then alert you that it is available to install. You can choose to install it but can also choose to ignore the update.

The automatic downloads will not take place if you are low on drive space and the download will be deleted if it has been completed but you start to run low on drive space.

Forum member pm-r helps us with deleting old, unneeded email addresses from autocomplete on IOS devices.

Tips for making your current phone last longer Courtesy of Fox News website. These tips will probably be old news to long time iPhone users but may help others.

Join me at 7:00 p.m. Central time (Midnight GMT) for the weekly Mac-Forums Video Chat forum roundup, Mac tips and IOS tips as usual. If all goes well the macOS tips will include uses for Smart Folders as well as more Siri for Mac tips.

Show Notes / Links

You can't delete Siri from macOS a.k.a Sierra but you don't have to enable it.

MacWorld's Ramon Loyola would like to see the Hey Siri feature found in IOS carried over to the version of Sierra in macOS Sierra. Here's how it's done. In essence you're going to do the following:
1. Enable Siri and create a custom keyboard shortcut to enable it.
2. From the Keyboard preference pane select the dictation tab and enable enhanced dictation. If you have multiple microphones make sure to choose the one you want to use.
3. Open the Accessibility preference pane Select the Dictation option then choose to Enable a keyword. The article suggests using "Hey" since that's what's used on IOS devices but other words should work as well.
4. In Advanced Options make the following changes

• When I say: Siri
• While using: Any application
• Perform: From the pop-up menu, select Press Keyboard Shortcut. The entry box will show “Press keys now” in light gray. Press the keyboard shortcut you use for Siri. In this example, I use Control-Space.

Note: During the show I mistakenly attributed this tip to MacWorld's Kirk McElhearn. My apologies to Mr. Loyola.

See why Walt Mossberg think's Siri is dumb. John Gruber at Daring Fireball has pointed out that when Siri underperforms that may pose a problem for Apple. His thought is that some users may never go back and try Siri again even after Apple has made improvements.

E-ink keys on a future Apple keyboard

I will be tied up for much of the evening. look for the weekly Mac-Forums video chat on Monday, October 24, 2016, at 8:00 p.m. Central Time (1:00 Tuesday GMT). I'll post a link late tonight or early tomorrow as well as an overview of the show content.

The gremlins continue for tonight's show. We lost the connection to Google mid show tonight. I'll post a new recording tomorrow.

Join me for the weekly Mac-Forums Video Chat at 7:00 p.m Central Time. (Midnight GMT) We'll include the forum roundup, a few IOS tips, macOS tips, and whatever other Mac news comes to mind. Once again the video dropped part way through the show. This time I had a backup of the recording which should be the full show. According to Google the entire show will be here

The IOS tips will include creating and deleting folders and controlling installation of Messages apps / extensions. Some of the info this week is a reprise of information presented when the feed disconnected last week.

Show notes

Welcome to our newest member, Martha Hartzog

Ideas for sharing photos across multiple devices.

Member MBP17 David has noticed that some website beacons / tracking managers may cause other sites to behave erratically.

There is an Apple event scheduled for 10:00 Thursday, October 27, 2016 where the announcement of new Macs is expected, Executive Editor Susie Ochs has the following take:

Rumors have been swirling that Apple is prepping an update to the MacBook Pro line, which will include a set of touch-sensitive OLED keys to replace the function row along the top of the keyboard, allowing those keys to change based on the application you’re using.

The other rumor is new ports: Apple may be ditching standard USB-A ports for USB-C. This would match Apple’s approach for the MacBook, which has a single USB-C port for charging and connectivity—

Forum commentary on Apple’s October 27, 2016 product announcements.

A thread which started out to be on the merits of using Google Chrome spiraled into a general discussion of web tracking beacons and which browsers /search engines give users the most options for avoiding/reducing trackers

Why are there no Touschscreen Mac’s to compete with the Microsoft Surface series?

Sarah Kingsbury at iPhone Life shows us how to turn of IOS 10’s five most annoying features. The five features that she discusses are

1. unlock the phone without pressing the home button
2. If you are having trouble sending effects in iMessage make sure you have the reduced motion option turned off .
3. Turn off Raise to Wake
4. Turn of Handwriting in Landscape Mode
5. Turn iMessage App Auto Install if the developer of an app already on your phone releases an extension for iMessage its automatically install the extension.

In an iMessages conversation, open the app store by first tapping the arrow to the left of the text entry box and then tapping the App Store icon. Next open the app drawer by tapping the four circles in the lower left and then choose Store. Finally, tap Manage and toggle Automatically Add Apps off. Tap done. From now on, you'll need to manually add apps by returning to the Manage tab in the iMessages app store and enabling apps individually.l

Join me for the weekly Mac-Forums video chat will be November 7, 2016. We'll start at 7:00 p.m. Central Time (1:00 a.m. November 8, 2016 GMT). as usual. We'll have the forum roundup, a few IOS tips, and a few Mac tips thrown in for good measure.

I recorded the show earlier tonight but kicked a cable or something and had some audio issues. I could probably fix the audio but I think it would be faster to simply post a new show tomorrow. Hence the date change.

Welcome to our newest member, SyrupFiend

If you are a bit confused about whether to run your Mac notebook on battery or leave it on the charger check out this forum thread. It has a link to Apple’s recommendations on the matter. Essentially the suggestion is to use the notebook on electricity when possible. About once a month run the battery down to about 10% which recalibrate the battery monitoring system.

Essentially, a charge cycle equals one full discharge down to zero percent and then a recharge back up to 100 percent. A discharge down to 50 percent and then back to 100 percent would equal half a cycle. Over time, each charge cycle decreases a battery’s capacity from its design specifications, meaning that the fewer times you drain it, the longer the battery last — all other things being equal.See Digital Trends

Carrying audio across multiple slides in Powerpoint

Use IOS 10 Accessibility features to have Siri announce incoming phone calls

• Open the Settings app.
• Tap Phone.
• Select Announce Calls.

Always, Headphones & Car, Headphones Only, or Never

The name is announced as it appears in your contacts. So, if you have first name only in the contacts that’s what gets announced.

From iPhone Life Tip of the Day - Find your car using your iPhone even if it doesn’t have Car Play
To do this, you’ll drop a pin from your parked car’s location. When it’s time to find the car, you can get walking directions to our dropped pin. Here’s how:

• When you park your vehicle, open Maps.
• Tap the blue dot that represents your location and select Mark My Location. This will drop a red pin.
• Now go off and do what you need to do. Then when it’s time to find your parked car, open Maps again and tap the red pin you dropped.

Use Find my Phone to find your iPhone even if it’s dead.

10 IOS 10 tips from iPhoneLife

The latest iTunes version (12.5) does not show all playlists in the sidebar as it has in the past. “To view all your playlists in a given library, click the sidebar where it says Music Playlists, for example, and choose All Playlists. This displays playlists containing all media kinds, but you’ll need to do this in each library where you want to view all your playlists.”

You cannot match or upload videos to iCloud Music Library; you can only add music to this library. You may see some videos in your iCloud Music Library, but these are ones that come from the iTunes Store or Apple Music. They’re the only videos you can have in your iCloud Music Library.

Join me at 7:00 p.m. Central tonight (1:00 a.m. Monday November 14 GMT) for the November 13, 2016 Mac-Forums video chat. We'll have the usual forum roundup, an assortment of Mac and IOS tips, and whatever else comes to mind.

I'm still working on the tips section so you'll have to watch to see which ones I include.

Show Notes

Welcome to our newest member brandoncb96

Removing old Admin accounts / info from second hand Macs

Comparison / explanation of the mechanical hard drives SSDs and Flash memory storage options

Enabling Siri in third-party apps IOS 10 opens Siri to third-party apps. This allows apps to take advantage of the Siri. Enable third-party Siri support by doing the following:

1. Open Settings and tap Siri
2. Select App Support (bottom of the page/screen)
3. Toggle Siri support to On for those apps you want to add Siri support

The number of third-party apps ssupporting Siri should grow as IOS 10 matures.

21 Things you can ask Siri Jim Karen at iPhone Life has a list of 21 things you can ask Siri to do.

Siri automatically adds a new reminder to the default Reminders list. But if you have add specific lists in Reminders such as Shopping, you can ask Siri to add a new reminder to a specific list. Say, "Add milk to my Shopping list."

If you are using Siri to do multi step math problems be aware that you must be careful how you state the problem.

Kirk “The iTunes Guy McElhearn has something else for his “Hey Apple, Fix This” column in Macworld. The newest version of iTunes does not show as many artist graphics as it did in previous versions. This can make selecting music in this view more of chore than it needs to be. The previous version didn’t always provide the best graphic for an artist and there was no way to choose the graphic on your own but at least there was a graphic there.

Join me tonight for the weekly Mac-Forums video chat (7:00 p.m. Central, 1:00 a.m. GMT). We'll have the usual forum roundup and our collection of tips for both IOS and Mac. Join us to see what tips are included this week.

Show Notes

Welcome to our newest member, CarolineBrazil

Possible fix when Time Machine stops backing up
Mac-Forums member IWT has discovered that sometimes Time Machine will stop backing up automatically but continues to work properly if the backup is triggered manually. His solution is as follows:

1. Open Time Machine preferences,
2. Switch off Time Machine and deselect hard drives associated with Time Machine.
3. Rebooted iMac.
4. Opened TM, re-selected both EHDs, switched TM slider to On.

Misconceptions about switching from PC to Mac

Prevent Emoji’s from replacing words in Messages Conner Carey
If you type the word and tap the emoji, it will replace the word.
If you type the word and tap the space bar, then tap the emoji, it will appear next to the word.

Creating an Apple ID for children under 13 Becca Ludlum Phone Life

• Open Settings and choose iCloud.
• Select Family.
• Either tap Add Family Member...
• Tap Create an Apple ID for a Child.
• You’ll be prompted to acknowledge a statement from Apple about children’s accounts, tap Next.
• Then it will ask for your child’s birthday. After selecting their birthday, you’ll be prompted to read and agree to the Parent Privacy Disclosure.
• Enter your credit card, debit card, or Union Pay (depending on which is assigned to your Apple ID) CVV security code. Tap Next.
• Then you’ll be asked to enter your child’s name and create an Apple ID for them via an iCloud email address.
• Choose a password. Choose and answer your child’s security questions (make sure to keep all of this information in a safe place!).

Hide Private Photos on your iPhone Rheanne Taylor iPhone Life

• Open the photos app and locate the photo or photos you want to hide.
• Tap the Share icon.
• Select Hide.
• Confirm Hide Photo

How to Unhide Your Photos

• Visit the Albums tab in the Photos app.
• Find the photo you want to unhide. Tap the Share icon.
• Select Unhide.

Reset Restrictions Passcode on IOS devices
First, back up all of your important data to iTunes. If something goes wrong, you'll be able to restore your iPhone.
Once that's taken care of, you'll need to erase your device and set it up as new. To do this,

• Open the Settings app.
• Tap General.
• Select Reset.
• Choose Erase All Content and Settings.
• Then tap Erase iPhone (or iPad) to confirm that you want to do this.

You'll see a welcome screen from Apple once you boot back up your device.

• Follow the steps; when prompted, select "Set Up as New iPhone." This is important. If you choose to restore from a backup, you will simply restore your restrictions password as well.

Touch Bar MacBook Pro review from Macorld

FoxNews compares MacBook Pros to the Microsoft Surface

Apple has been more meticulous than Microsoft at choosing internal components, and GPUs are one prime example. The MacBook Pro's AMD GPU handily beat the Surface Book's Nvidia card in non-gaming tests.

Yet the Radeon Pro 450 is specifically built for improving speeds when rendering 3D objects in CAD software, and the Nvidia 965M is more an everyman video card -- useful for CAD rendering, but also gaming."

In its review, Ars Technica revealed that all new 15-inch MacBook Pro models come with discrete graphics cards, which is a first for Apple. Usually, only higher-end 15-inch models would ship with a discrete GPU. But Apple wanted to offer the same kind of performance across the board, so it opted for adding a discrete GPU in all 15-inch MacBook Pros.

Join us for the Mac-Forums video chat tonight (7:99 p.m Central, 1:00 a.m. GMT). We'll have the usual doe roundup, some helpful Apple support links, Our OS X tip talks about how to download El Capitan now that Sierra has been released, and an IOS tip or two.

Welcome to our newest member, rijadferati

Apple fights massive Tax bill.

According to reports from Bloomberg news Apple will soon discontinue its wireless router division and has been gradually winding it down over the last year. Original Bloomberg report is here.

Member Scatterbox is looking for a means of creating a secure USB drive that can be used on both Mac and PC.

Spammers have now find ways to spam people using calendar events and notifications.

Forum member Randy B. Singer has posted a reminder in the forum about two iPhone 6 repair programs. One program covers iPhone 6 Plus models that experience display / multi-touch issues. The second program covers iPhone 6s models experiencing unexpected shutdowns.

Now that Apple is releasing its OS X updates by download they have a policy where once the new OS is released the previous OS can’t be downloaded unless it has been previously purchased. That seems to have changed recently. If your Mac cannot run Sierra there is now a way to download El Capitan even if you haven’t previously purchased it.

Using Control Center on the iPhone / iPad

Things to check when some elements don’t load on a site.

Macworld’s Glenn Fleisman has discovered that there are limits to the number of emails that can be sent per day from iCloud accounts.

Join us for the Mac-Forums video chat tonight (7:00 p.m Central, 1:00 a.m. GMT). We'll have the usual forum roundup and an assortment of tips / tricks. The Mac OS tip this week will look at a few tips to tell whether you Mac needs additional ram. I'm still looking at IOS tips for this weeks so stay tuned for that. If the next few minutes of testing goes well I'll have an iTunes trick for you as well.

Welcome to our newest member, marygrace

Apple’s Holiday return policy this year will be a bit more generous than the typical 14 days.

Tips for speeding up a slow Mac Member digital bulls has a list of ten things that may help speed up the Mac. The only one I would be careful with is using utilities such as Clean MY Mac to delete launch agents.Personally I’d avoid CMM and similar utilities for deleting launch agents unless you are dead certain that you are not deleting one that is needed. Many of these utilities seem to get a bit overzealous.

At the very least make a backup beforehand.

Photos Version 2 does not delete uploaded photos.
When you attach your camera to your Mac and open Photos, right at the top of the screen on the left, you will see your camera name and
But if I may offer a small piece of advice? It's always best to import your photos first, then detach the card or camera and reformat the card from within the camera. This is because that way you know your card and camera are "in sympathy" and reformatting is way better than repeatedly deleting the photos from the card or camera using the Photos app - avoids card corruption.

There is some very good information in Ian’s post.

If you are running Windows protection utilities such as AV or anti-malware software inside a virtual machine remember that these utilities do not affect your mac files.

Thanks forum member pr-r for linking to this tidbits article about the optimized storage option introduced in Sierra.

Thoughts os stoping Calendar spam

Use AppleScript to launch iTunes and play a specific playlist.

I’ve used a very simple AppleScript to launch iTunes and start playing a specific playlist. Here’s how it’s done:

1. Launch iTunes and create any playlists that you like to use. I have a few playlists based on musical Genre as well as a playlist which includes only holiday music for the Christmas season.
2. i use Smart playlists (iTunesf>File>New>Smart Playlist) for this trick so I don’t have to manually move any newly-added music to the library. Regular playlists will also work but you have to add the files to the appropriate playlists.
3. Open Script Editor (Applications/Utilities/Script Editor) and paste the following code into a new document:

--This code snippet tells iTunes to play the playlist whose name is in quotes. If iTunes is not running it is launched by this command.

tell application "iTunes"
play playlist "Holiday"
end tell

4.Replace the word “Holiday” in the script with the name of one of your playlists. The name must be inside the quotation marks.
5. Test the script by hitting the play button. If it works as expected go to the File menu and choose Export. Save the file as an application so you don’t have to use the script editor every time you want to run it.

Use the Comments field in iTunes to add more specific tags thus enabling more specific playlists. If, for example, you add the words Holiday and Inspirational to the Comments field for a song that track would appear in a “holiday’ playlist and an “Inspirational” playlist. Just make sure to include a space or comma separating each word in the Comments filed.

Join me at 7:00 p.m. Central Time tonight (1:00 a.m. Monday GMT) for the December 11, 2016 Mac-Forums Sunday video chat.

As usual I'll have the forum roundup and an assortment of tips and tricks. As soon as I finalize the tips I'll let you know here.

Show Notes

Welcome to our newest member, agracultural Also Welcome back to member Vansmith

Member RossW is having some issues with Time Machine being unable to connect to a Time Capsule in order to complete a backup. In the course of the thread a discussion of some general issues about verifying Time Machine backups arose. You cannot verify a Time Capsule’s hard drive in the same way you would an external drive but you can identify some potential problems.

When a network drive is used for a Time Machine backup the files are stored in a single sparsebundle file. The file mounts as a hard drive in the Finder when double clicked and that can be verified by Disk Utility.
1. Open the Time Capsule so that you can access the sparsebundle Time Machine has created.
2. Double-chick the sparsebundle. It should now appear as a disk drive in the Finder.
3. Launch Disk Utility and select the drive that was just created in step 2.
4. You should now be able to run Disk Utility and repair any errors that are found.

If you’d like to have the photos on your Mac accessible to your Apple TV give this tip a try. The original forum thread is here

Member Teknoid wonders whether .mp4 files can be compromised with malware which allows / forces them to “phone home” sending personaL information on to its point of origin. Member KevinJS suggests “Use VLC for playing media files, and turn off the option (Preferences/Interface) "Allow Metadata Network Access" Changing that setting prevents media files from phoning home.

If you are having issues with Microsoft Office 2008 wanting to convert British dates to US formats, this tip might be the solution for you.

Google hacks

Deleting Contacts from your iPhone / iPad

Fine tune volume level in OS X

Edit: I just looked at the show feed for the first time since last night. Looks like something might have gone wrong with the feed or the upload. I'll work on this tomorrow and re-shoot if necessary.